Introducing the Awl Music App: Music Videos for and by People, Not Machines

Today,
we launch Awl Music as an app on iTunes. You can watch your
favorite music videos on your iPad, or throw them to your Apple TV
like any other television channel.
Get it here! Here’s why we think this needs to exist.

My music video collection began in 1989, the year my family
finally got MTV. Cable had been slow to arrive in the San Fernando
Valley, and my family was not much for early adopting anything
anyway. I had one previous experience with MTV, a few years
earlier, when I spent two weeks of the summer in the basement of my
aunt’s house in Scarsdale, watching six hours a day of MTV with my
cousin Stephen.

That was 1986, and it was was a phenomenal year for music. It
was the year of Janet Jackson’s Control, Peter Gabriel’s
So, The Beastie Boys’ Licensed to Ill, Madonna’s
True Blue, Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet, Run D.M.C.’s
Raising Hell and The Pet Shop Boys’s Please. Phil
Collins was still releasing videos off of No Jacket
Required, and he was still fronting Genesis for Invisible
Touch. MTV played the videos from these albums with the
frequency of propaganda, and they carved deep, deep pathways into
my brain.

The video for “Sledgehammer” was the first time I was conscious
of filmmaking technology. “Land of Confusion” was my first exposure
to political satire. The strings at the beginning of “Papa Don’t
Preach,” played over scenes of the Manhattan skyline, became
indelibly associated with New York City. Things I adored for the
rest of my life first came to my attention during those two weeks
watching television in Scarsdale.

But by the time MTV came to my house in the Valley in 1989, all
those music videos were off the air. Even at the age of twelve I
had a sense of nostalgia, so I went on a mission to capture all the
ones I associated with that summer. Whenever there was a “Top 100
Videos of All Time” weekend, I spent hours with my face a foot from
the television, one finger on the VCR’s record button. For good
measure, I also grabbed new videos I liked, just in case they
vanished, too.

I ultimately filled two VHS tapes, long-play setting, six hours
each. I’m not sure I ever watched them. It just felt good to know I
had that connection to 1986 if I needed it. Years later, the
Internet came around, making this entire exercise pointless. The
tapes no longer have any function (nor do I own a VCR), they just
remind me that I once tried very hard to hold on to something
ephemeral that was really important to me.

A number of people I grew up with had a relationship with music
videos. We saw them the way we looked up to a cool older sibling we
wanted to be like one day. Music videos defined our sense of fun.
They provided some belonging to those who felt different. They
presented us with attitudes to imitate. They had an effect, and we
loved them.

It’s with this in mind that The Awl began Awl Music, and today
we re-platform site as an iPad app. You can watch it like a
television channel if you also have Apple TV. The app is available
right now
on iTunes.

Awl Music is meant to emulate the MTV experience of thirty years
ago. We have VJs just like MTV did back then, and these are people
you already know. Dave Bry, Jeff Rosenthal, Sarah Johnson and David
Shapiro—all friends of The Awl—are programming the channel. Awl
Network editors like Alex, Choire, Edith and Adam will also contribute. There will
be guest VJs like Emily Gould and her “Songs
About Gossip” playlist, as well as crowdsourced selections like
the “Summer
Jams” playlist. Everyone who programs the channel has great
taste. Each one has a different taste.

In some ways this is a reaction against the trend of
algorithm-based discovery engines that permeate the Internet
nowadays. Our VJs pick videos that resonate with them. We believe
these videos are less likely to suck than the ones guessed at by
lines of code. We’re taking on the machines. The machines
understand genre, they can detect syncopated rhythm, and they know
what other videos people who watched one video also watched. But
the machines don’t understand meaning.

For the next week and a half, The Awl will be running a series
by a few writers who know what it’s like to find meaning in a music
video. Specifically, we asked them to write about the first music
video that meant something to them. If Awl Music can bring even a
touch of experiences like theirs to your television set, we’ll
consider the whole enterprise a success.